The Sorkin Problem
This blog contains spoilers about The Newsroom episodes so far.
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Dear Mr. Sorkin,
Where’s it gone? Why have you lost it?
Of course, I’m not talking about talent or skill or drive or reason. I’m talking about your main ingredient. The Newsroom looks and feels familiar - Sorkonien - but the top note that you used to hit with ease is not only lacking but is almost absent in full.
What happened?
I hear you on talk shows and see the puff pieces, and on them and in them you talk about the show like an old screwball comedy. Hence the prat falls, the ditzy comedy and the pretty women who love the heroic newsmen from afar.
I usually give in and love all that stuff. I mourned when the West Wing was over and felt cheated when they pulled Studio 60. Both shows, for me, were highly entertaining and fast and hopeful and flawed and aspirational and flawed. And flawed. Perfect.
The Newsroom though - I want to love it. I want to line it up with Breaking Bad and get my mind blown by two completely different worlds on the same night. Breaking Bad is holding up its end of deal. The Newsroom though - it’s kind of hard to watch. I don’t mind the lecturing(yet) and I can stand the lefty aeroplanes flying around, but one thing I can’t forgive is the lack of conflict.
Where is it?
Can anyone point out to me two major differing opinions in the whole newsroom? And what do the individuals who work there want? And what happens if they don’t get it? [image error]
Mr. Sorkin - where’s the conflict and where are the consequences?
In The West Wing there were ideological differences, staff differences, party differences, moral differences, philosophical differences. And there was a whole fictional world at stake because of those differences.
In The Newsroom everyone sounds the same. I mean literally. There’s the Old Sorkin who runs the news division, the Middle Aged Sorkin who anchors the news show, the Female Sorkin who’s the wind beneath Middle Aged Sorkin’s wings.
The place is full of fast talking, shouty Sorkins.
For instance. At the end of Episode 5 **********SPOLIER**************KINDA******************the whole building lines up to give a donation towards the ransom of a foreign kid who they enlisted for a news piece. Everyone single person lined up. What a nice gesture.
What a missed opportunity.
Even the guys from another show - who were waring over staff, times, shows etc at the start - were lined up. All of them smiling, all of them wanting the same thing - to do the right thing.
And this is the problem. Everyone is trying to do the right thing - the same thing - and it’s boring as fuck. There’s a couple of token attempts at friction towards Will and his crew - an evil station owner and a gossip reporter. But, so what? What’s the worst that can happen? They loose their job? A fabulously wealthy know-it-all and his recently hired nod-along minions lose their job?
Eh?
I think there’s the problem. It’s going to be really hard to create conflict here because the show was built on a fundamental flaw - reality.
It makes it almost impossible to create conflict on The Newsroom because unfortunately they ‘live’ in our world. They can’t set a bomb off in Time Square in the season finale or have the President shot at like they did on The West Wing. By their own rules it wouldn’t feel right to make up dramatic events that didn’t happen. Their politicians are real, their stories are real and their dates, times and events are real. They tied themselves to us - but in the recent past.
We already know that the aim of ‘telling the truth in the news’ was a failure. Oil spills happen, politicians get shot and the people we’re going to watch as they can do nothing to change it. They’re just observers as we were. The show now simply asks us to look at people who are witnessing what we have already witnessed - and their reaction to it.
It’s a show trapped in ‘fact’ in our world, where people talk quickly and walk into glass doors.
There’s no real conflict, no real consequences, no real reason to invest.
But I still really want to.
-
-
-
-
Dear Mr. Sorkin,
Where’s it gone? Why have you lost it?
Of course, I’m not talking about talent or skill or drive or reason. I’m talking about your main ingredient. The Newsroom looks and feels familiar - Sorkonien - but the top note that you used to hit with ease is not only lacking but is almost absent in full.
What happened?
I hear you on talk shows and see the puff pieces, and on them and in them you talk about the show like an old screwball comedy. Hence the prat falls, the ditzy comedy and the pretty women who love the heroic newsmen from afar.
I usually give in and love all that stuff. I mourned when the West Wing was over and felt cheated when they pulled Studio 60. Both shows, for me, were highly entertaining and fast and hopeful and flawed and aspirational and flawed. And flawed. Perfect.
The Newsroom though - I want to love it. I want to line it up with Breaking Bad and get my mind blown by two completely different worlds on the same night. Breaking Bad is holding up its end of deal. The Newsroom though - it’s kind of hard to watch. I don’t mind the lecturing(yet) and I can stand the lefty aeroplanes flying around, but one thing I can’t forgive is the lack of conflict.
Where is it?
Can anyone point out to me two major differing opinions in the whole newsroom? And what do the individuals who work there want? And what happens if they don’t get it? [image error]
Mr. Sorkin - where’s the conflict and where are the consequences?
In The West Wing there were ideological differences, staff differences, party differences, moral differences, philosophical differences. And there was a whole fictional world at stake because of those differences.
In The Newsroom everyone sounds the same. I mean literally. There’s the Old Sorkin who runs the news division, the Middle Aged Sorkin who anchors the news show, the Female Sorkin who’s the wind beneath Middle Aged Sorkin’s wings.
The place is full of fast talking, shouty Sorkins.
For instance. At the end of Episode 5 **********SPOLIER**************KINDA******************the whole building lines up to give a donation towards the ransom of a foreign kid who they enlisted for a news piece. Everyone single person lined up. What a nice gesture.
What a missed opportunity.
Even the guys from another show - who were waring over staff, times, shows etc at the start - were lined up. All of them smiling, all of them wanting the same thing - to do the right thing.
And this is the problem. Everyone is trying to do the right thing - the same thing - and it’s boring as fuck. There’s a couple of token attempts at friction towards Will and his crew - an evil station owner and a gossip reporter. But, so what? What’s the worst that can happen? They loose their job? A fabulously wealthy know-it-all and his recently hired nod-along minions lose their job?
Eh?
I think there’s the problem. It’s going to be really hard to create conflict here because the show was built on a fundamental flaw - reality.
It makes it almost impossible to create conflict on The Newsroom because unfortunately they ‘live’ in our world. They can’t set a bomb off in Time Square in the season finale or have the President shot at like they did on The West Wing. By their own rules it wouldn’t feel right to make up dramatic events that didn’t happen. Their politicians are real, their stories are real and their dates, times and events are real. They tied themselves to us - but in the recent past.
We already know that the aim of ‘telling the truth in the news’ was a failure. Oil spills happen, politicians get shot and the people we’re going to watch as they can do nothing to change it. They’re just observers as we were. The show now simply asks us to look at people who are witnessing what we have already witnessed - and their reaction to it.
It’s a show trapped in ‘fact’ in our world, where people talk quickly and walk into glass doors.
There’s no real conflict, no real consequences, no real reason to invest.
But I still really want to.
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